When dealing with multiple data sources for a database or set of data that is important to the survival of your business, you need to be able to process the data efficiently and accurately. The most difficult data sources to process are printed paper and PDF’s.  A lengthy process of scanning, putting through OCR software, or manually entering data is not efficient or accurate.  So what is the right thing to do?  Who should you turn to?   Let us share with you a real situation that happened with one of our clients.

We were given a pdf file  that contained 219,121 pages and 2,848,401 records that needed to be loaded into a database.  The data in the PDF was very valuable to the company and needed to be processed quickly.  They didn’t have days, weeks or months to get the data into their system.  Their competitors were definitely dealing with the same file, and if they figured it out quicker, they could lose a lot of business.

The file was not exported from excel or from a text editor, but rather looked like it was some sort of export from a custom built database.  There were no out of the box solutions that could parse the data efficiently or accurately.

The file looked like this:

The PDF file was arranged very nicely, but a simple copy and paste into notepad did not allow for loading into a database.  The reason we could not use a simple copy and paste is because PDFs have a different way of organizing text information.  A simple copy and paste operation is not capable of extracting all the “metadata” used to visually represent the text in an organized manner.

Manually copying/pasting the PDF line by line could take days or weeks.  At Clevertech, we have been dealing with complex data integration for nearly 12 years, and we knew how to come up with a process to solve this problem.   We were able to implement a solution that automates this process to take minutes instead of hours/weeks.  Our sophisticated tool is capable of “arranging” the text information from the PDF into an easy to manipulate form.  The extracted data can easily be imported into an Excel spreadsheet, or into a MSSQL/MYSQL or Access database for further processing.  The next time the client receives a complex PDF – they will have no fear of losing valuable business.

Below is a small screenshot from a large PDF file that contains 219,121 pages and 2,848,401 records:

Here is the result of the entire file, notice the Row Count – 2,848,401 records.

At Clevertech, we do love to take on the complex projects.  We define complex projects in the same way that Geoff Smart and Randy Street discuss in their New York Times Bestseller,  ”Who: The A method for Hiring“.  They describe complex projects as a set of outcomes that only 10% of possible firms can achieve.  Clevertech takes pride in being a firm that strives in successfully taking on complex projects and achieving the most efficient and accurate outcomes.

Permalink  |  Published in Business Strategy  |  Kuty Shalev

Transcript of Video:

In a data driven organization having the right reports creates transparency and allows you to take action. In this video case study we are highlighting a multimillion dollar client in the non-profit space that is very serious about its data related to events they run across the US.

Building a good report requires bringing forth the most important information and then allowing for easy drill-down. Notice how the first view is of all the data by event type. The top menu bar acts as a filter. Notice how we use pictures of the regional directors to make the report friendly. Any missing event information is highlighted on the left hand side which is immediately actionable.

Scrolling down gives event constituent details – essentially who attended the events above. An attractive menu bar provides details such as financial budget information displayed in sophisticated bar graphs that tell a story in one glance OR context by tag across time periods.

Other dashboards provide more granular data for specific Key performance indicators that we define together with the client. Using the latest charting, mapping and graphing technologies allows for a visualization of data that allows the company to tell a story in a more meaningful and actionable way that just a set of numbers.

Our core value is to “Be Clever”. Can we help you be clever in your business?
Connect with us on a variety of social media through the links on our website.
Ask us a question on twitter at hastag beclever, or connect via linkedin – we are active in the community and encourage your participation.

Permalink  |  Published in Uncategorized  |  Kuty Shalev

With the release of OS X Mountain Lion, will the new Messages for Mac dominate the world of instant messaging?
Here is what you need to know.

The Features You Already Know and Love

Messages for Mac replaces iChat and brings iMessage technology from your phone or iPad to your desktop. The main features are:

• Ability to chat with friends using multiple chat services.
• Video and text chat with groups.
• Notifications of delivered and read messages, BBM style.

The Big Payoff—What REALLY Sets Messages for Mac Apart

The best new feature is device independence. Start a conversation on your desktop and move to your iPhone, your iPod or iPad. This means you can switch seamlessly back and forth between devices without skipping a beat.

When you start an iMessage chat on your computer, the entire text of the conversation shows up in the same program on your phone. Imagine the implications:

• Need to leave the office in the middle of a talk? No problem, just continue it on your iPhone.
• Need to look something up on your computer when you were IM-ing on your phone? Again, not an issue: switch devices, look up the information and reply on either phone or computer or Ipod.

Ever been frustrated with multiple device notification? Once you’ve read a message on one device, it will disable notifications on all other devices you’re using.

How Will This Affect Your Company?

Instant messaging is critical for nimble businesses. Messages for Mac can streamline mobile employees and increase employee productivity. It’s entirely possible that Messages is reimagining corporate messaging as we know it. And that’s Clever.

Permalink  |  Published in Business Strategy  |  chris

Software as a Service is the holy grail of business models

Transcript of Video:

The idea of recurring revenue where variable costs are close to zero is very attractive.
And Clevertech has participated in building such software together with entrepreneurs who have a vision and need a technical partner. This client teaches PR firms how to keep an eye on their bottom line.
And in a business that charges by the hour, the most important data is time sheets.
And we all know how easy it is to get people to submit their time sheets.

While we also built a beautiful time entry system, I wanted to focus on the asthetic beauty of the business process of loading pre-existing data into the system.

The principles behind the beauty are:

• The data is easy on the eyes. It has margins, spacing, and clear attractive font
• The headers are wearing attractive clothing.
• They draw the eye and on rollover tell you exactly what they are doing
• And most importantly, at every step of the way, we hold your hand.
• Whether it is providing a sample upload file, or after you upload, we show you each line and allow for in-line editing, you always feel like you are in control

Clever user interfaces and Clever business processes in service
of the end user, and the end customer.

 Our core value is to “Be Clever”. Can we help you be clever in your business? Connect with us on a variety of social media through the links on our website. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Permalink  |  Published in Video Case Study  |  Kuty Shalev

Our first video case study highlights how Clevertech together with our awesome clients are being Clever.

We are peering under the hood to show you specific functionality and the principles we adhere to in service of being Clever.

Transcript of Video:
Here is a real world example where Clevertech is focused on increasing profits by reducing costs for a client. This client who is in the moving industry has an expense – a full time office staff that handles paperwork relating to Certificates of Insurance.
When moving to a commercial building, the management of that building requires the proper insurance.
Managing the insurance paperwork required takes a staff member all day, as she has over 5,000 word documents to manage each request, building, and management company.

Could we help?

Our solution was organized around three core principles:

First, organize the data so that each building and management company’s information is captured in one central place Second, the ability to take that data and pre-populate a PDF version of the insurance form and Third, the ability to transmit that PDF via email, and fax in one click.

So let’s see how that works in the actual system. When we enter an address the system checks the database we created when we imported the 5,000 word files into structured data. This is where you can feel the power of organization. In this case both buildings require a Certificate of Insurance indicated by the “COI” link next to each address.
By clicking on the COI link, you can preview and edit it. Notice that the form looks like a traditional paper based COI, and you can make changes to it on screen. Once you are happy with your edits with one click the COI is emailed and faxed to the proper destination.

What used to take all day, now takes just a few clicks. Our core value is to “Be Clever”.

Can we help you be clever in your business?
Connect with us on a variety of social media through the links on our website. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

Permalink  |  Published in Video Case Study  |  Kuty Shalev

Throwing out the old L-shaped desk for the new motorized standing/sitting geekdesk (video), I took the time to reconfigure the office for more room, and less wires. So I power down my 2 terrabyte RAID5 terrastation and move it to a new location. What a delicate piece of equipment. On startup, the NAS refused to start up, made all sorts of beeping noises and would not give me access to my data.

So, what do you do when your backup crashes?

From a business perspective, this was nothing to worry about. I have 3 backups for all of those files. Dropbox for online access but also provides backup, Crashplan, using local version for near backup and Mozy, for online backup.

But what about the family photos? I use Google’s Picasa for the latest photos, and I also have about 50 gb of older photos and videos that were stored on that delicate terrastation.

I’ll spare you the terrible advice terrastation support put me through, and the fact that 18 month old equipment is no longer under warranty, firmware flashes that did not work, the forum board members that HAD answers but they were deleted by the moderators because they turned on telnet which voids the warranty (that I no longer had). And of course, the $5,000 price quote to recover the RAID 5 hard drive.

What saved my files? At one point I had these old photos on another computer, before I bought the terrastation about 18 months ago. And mozy dutifully backed those up. Logging into Mozy and seeing the 63.5 GB backup, being able to browse the archive and see those photos back from 1999 — a wonderful feeling!

I clicked on restore, downloaded the restore program and was told it would take about 2 days to download everything. But within seconds, I see folders appearing and my pictures returning to me.

Guess what? I will not be buying anything to replace the piece of junk terrastation. Turns out that the cloud is all you need. I think I knew that, but now I’ve lived through it.

Permalink  |  Published in Fun Technology  |  Kuty Shalev

The only real way to grow sales and profits is to have marginal utility – something different about your business that is significant and has relevance.

The flip side of that is that if you are doing the same thing as everyone else, you will be priced and no longer have the margins that are required for profits.

What tools are you using to operate your business? Do you have the ability to act on information in a way that creates marginal utility? Are you in control of your data?

At some point in the growth of your business building your own customer relationship management system becomes the smart move because it will help you create the marginal utility that customers pay for. Your profit depends on it.

A recent Harvard Business Review article discusses Twelve Ways to create barriers to competitors and for a vast majority of them, it is the underlying systems that are the drivers of the creation of barriers. Ongoing innovation, Consumer involvement, and Execution are all powered by custom software designed to express the company’s marginal utility.

When is it time to build your own CRM? When the feature set of the inexpensive CRMs feel constricting. When you have an important business need and getting the data from one system into the next system is too slow and labor intensive. And certainly if your staff growth has hit a point where you can not identify exactly what they are doing, but they seem to be busy all day pushing paper or excel files to just get what should be a simple management report – then you know your systems need an upgrade.

Permalink  |  Published in Business Strategy  |  Kuty Shalev

I am a big fan of the khanacademy.org, where Salmen Khan has addressed the fundamental principles of learning and utilizes a new medium to turn out a better product than the old style of learning.

I believe that the future will be filled with students learning from teacher movie stars via video and using web based exercises that track their understanding. New levels can not be turned on until mastery of the existing level is attained. This will ensure knowledge is gained.

Compare it to today’s education system where a 70% score allows you to graduate to a higher level. In what other situation does having a 70% understanding allow you to advance? Education ends up with Swiss cheese knowledge that does not allow attaining solid higher education.

All my kids are using khan academy to solidify their learning.

But that is not what this post is about. I follow some blogs about khan and found a great post from one of their technology wizards about web page speed. They made the point that while most admins love to tweak server side code, it’s the client side performance that suffers from some serious delays.

“The trouble with client-side perf is it’s really sneaky. It’s not nearly as straightforward as avoiding O(n2) algorithms in your server-side code. You have to think about request counts, request sizes, minification, DNS lookups, cache rules, proxy caching, asynchronous downloads, redirects, unused javascript, and more.” Read the full post.

At Clevertech, we have started using a tool that measures client side performance delays on a regular basis and gives us a score from A to F on each request as well as the overall page load.

We are using it to ensure we leave no stone unturned in our efforts to create that feeling of satisfaction when our sites are speedy and responsive.

Permalink  |  Published in Business Strategy, CRM  |  Kuty Shalev

I’ve owned each iPhone and iPad on release day and been a heavy user of both. I’ve suffered the multiple dropped calls per day while commuting from appointment to appointment in and around New York City, especially exiting the midtown tunnel, let alone actually in a tunnel or over a bridge. I’ve blessed Verizon once they offered the iPhone and had drop free calls day after day – but I fully realize it is on an older, slower, but more ubiquitous network.

But on to usage. In both my devices I only have two screens of apps. This is a new organizational principle for me as I am making heavy use of grouping apps into folders. Instead of my apps living on 5 screens and having to constantly swipe to find something, now it either on screen one or screen two. Makes me feel super organized.

Another point before we start. Many of the these apps cost money. Most are $2-$5/each, some are much more like Tom Tom which is $50 + $20/year for real time traffic. As this post is for business professionals, I assume that saving time is worth money. On to the apps.

Most Often Used Apps

Let’s start with the bottom bar, that’s where all the often used, super important items are supposed to be. And you only have four slots on the iPhone. So here’s what I have:

Phone, Google, Safari, RememberTheMilk. Notice what is not there. No Mail. No iPod. Lets get into it.
Phone - the standard phone app. It is a phone, after all.
Google - this app services for one click google search, but more importantly, once I set it up for my google apps account, it has a badge with the number of unread email messages I have. Once I open the app, I have two click access to all my google app services including mail, calendar, docs, and reader – which are my most frequent uses without having to re-log in. Super useful. And with voice activated search and one swipe search filters for places, images, or everything it has earned a place in the dock.
Safari - the browser. Can’t live without it. Biggest peeve? That you can’t use it together with last pass more easily. More on this later.
RememberTheMilk - this app costs $1/month for a pro license at www.RememberTheMilk.com. This is my ultimate GTD tool and with one click I can see my next steps, smart lists and projects. If I have a thought that needs to be captured, a quick click and type it in. I can even tag it on the fly with their amazing drop down menus for due date, tags, and priorities. If I’m on a car ride and have time to call some people, just pull up all the items I have in the call tag and start dialing. Pet peeve – it doesn’t integrate with the phone – no one click calling!

Ok, so what’s on my first page?
The standalone apps are:
messages, calendar, settings, clock and calculator
The groups are:
Read, write, travel, photo, social and money.

Name Your Groups

I have to point out that naming the groups is absolutely critical. Wrong names will lead to countless lost swipes and interruptions when you are trying to get something done and that is just not how it should work! We are all about ebing efficient, right? My favorites are “read” and “write” because generally that is most of my activities. Either I need to read something, or I need to write something. So let’s look at those.

Reading Group

Under reading I have: Wall Street Journal, NY Times, NPR News, Kindle, Dropbox, LastPass and InstaPaper.

Now notice that not every app here is strictly reading, but honestly why am I going to Dropbox? I’m going to look at a document, which is reading. And if I can do other things with it later, great. Dropbox is the best way to keep files that you have on your desktop, laptop, iPad and iPhone all in sync. I pay $50/yr for 50gb of storage. Easy to use and also easy to share individual files or folders with others.

Kindle is amazon’s ereader. Allows me to read up on the latest wherever I am. Never caught without a book to read.

Instapaper is a great service when you encounter an article you want to read but don’t have time to right then. Send it to instapaper and it will download it for easier formatting and offline reading when you are reading for it.

Last pass is a real favorite of mine. I’ve written about it before, and it is also $1/month service. It allows me to have very secure passwords, but not have to remember them. And if I need them on the go, just log into last pass and it will open the site for you. Pet peeve – log me into them while I’m in the browser like it does on the desktop. Loading another app and another browser seems inefficient. And it doesn’t have an iPad version.

On my iPad, I also have GoodReader. This is an amazing application. It integrates with both google docs and Dropbox. So if I have documents or PDF files that I need to read, I can download them on the fly or in advance into good reader and then have an excellent reading experience with good reader – almost as good as the kindle, but with more control for zooming.

Writing Group

In the writing group I have: SimpleNote, AudioNote, HT Recorder, Basecamp, Clevertech Mgmt, WordPress, Highrise, Pastie, Adobe Ideas, and Dragon Diction

I spend a lot of time writing in a variety of situations. Often simple note is the answer. The beauty of simple note is in it’s simplicity. List of documents on the left, large expandable writing area on the right and away we go. There is a desktop version called Resoph Notes available that automatically syncs your notes. So, once you are done typing – it is also available on your desktop with no additional work. This is a major feeling of freedom.

Writing is one thing, but if you are in a meeting that is meaningful to record the conversation, well, the iPhone or iPad works great for that. Personally, I am still on the hunt for a great Bluetooth microphone that I can slide in the middle of a conference room table that can pickup all the participants in a meeting. But even without it, it is decent quality. (Mikey is not quite there, but I’m waiting).

Notes are magical in that you can search them later. Audio recordings don’t quite allow for that. Livescribe, the smart pen, solved the problem. The pen records the audio, and you write notes with the pen. If you click the pen on a note you wrote, the audio would start playing from the same time you wrote the note. Searching audio by creating bookmarks with your notes. Brilliant!

But I really don’t want to carry a special pen and special paper. Enter iphone app audio note that does the same thing. Use the iphone/ipad to record while you take notes.  When you click on the text, the audio will skip to the time you made that note. Brilliant and efficient!

Now if you don’t need to actually take notes, and only record with the ability to click to bookmarks with no text, HTrecorder does a good job and it’s microphone technology is a bit better. Getting the files off the iPhone does take a little work, but they have some Dropbox capabilities and some web server capabilities which is not quite worry free sync, but its close.

If you find that you must draw a picture, Adobe Ideas gets that right. I use it on the iPad mostly, sketches up things nicely. I’d recommend getting a stylus if you use that alot. My finger can’t seem to master it’s finer usage. Think lines are great though.

Base camp and Highrise are 37signal products that I use to help run my business and Clevertech management is the custom website that we built to augment those tools. I would say that i mostly manage via email, but these tools make sure i can get in deeper if i need to.

WordPress is great for writing short blog post, or blog post ideas in a format so they upload right into the right software with no delay.

Pastie is for those repeated SMS messages you find yourself typing over and over, especially to the same person or group.

Finally, dragon diction, I thought I’d use a lot more and I still have not totally given up on it. Taking to the phone and having it write what I said seemed very romantic, but I have not gotten the hang of using it a lot yet.

On the iPad I also have Quick Office. sometimes you just need to edit that Microsoft Word document. And if you do, this is a great way to do it.

Travel Group

Weather, Maps, The Weather Channel, TripTracker, HopStop, BestParking, Boingo, ExitStrategy, TomTom, Yelp, Starbucks, TripAdvisor and Waze.

So there are two types of travel I have optimized this for – driving and flying, more driving than flying. The basic weather app is great for a quick look and the weather channel is a nice upgrade when desired.

Driving directions are handled by TomTom which is just “ok”. Best feature is the $20/year for real time traffic altered that will ask you to reroute if it finds a faster route. Feels like magic. The shortfalls are how hard it is to get the address in there. Should be much easier.

Now I drive to manhattan a lot and that means finding parking. BestParking is awesome to snag a cheap parking spot. It’s interface and speed could use a tune up, but if it regularly saves me from $10-$30 in parking, I’m not complaining.

Once I’m in manhattan and parked my car for the day, I still may have to use the subway and bus to get around and HopStop tells me exactly where to go, and this is super important downtown where the streets seem to get all turned around instead of being laid out in a proper grid. Exit Strategy is a great subway app with maps and also tells you exactly with subway car to get on in order to ensure you are perfectly aligned with the proper staircase so you are uber-efficient. Seems like overkill, but those few saved minutes feel so good!

TripIt is great for keeping all your travel plans in one spot, particularly flying trips and Boingo for finding and paying for those hotspots across the world. Waze is driving directions based on the wisdom of the crowds and trip advisor and yelp gives a great scoop on where to go right now with user reviews. Trip advisor is more on what to do, yelp is more where to eat. And Starbucks if you just need that extra caffeine, although in manhattan you may be able to get a better cup if you look a little harder.

UPDATE: 6/12/2011
I added two more apps: Award Wallet to organize all my frequent flyer and credit card awards and Expensify in a valiant attempt to keep all my receipts organized better.

Social Group

Facebook, HootSuite, Ember, Toggl, Foursquare, Trillian, Google Voice, Skype, Presently, IM+ Pro

Facebook on iPhone or friendly on the iPad. HootSuite is a great application for writing once and posting on Facebook, twitter, linked in and others – even scheduled. I used to have linked in app as well, but it had an annoying badge that I couldn’t turn off and who wants a blaring red number starting at you all the time?

Ember is the 37signals campfire chat project. Toggl is a time tracking software (wow). Foursquare is great if you like checking in and getting tips, and collecting badges – and who doesn’t like that from time to time?

Google voice may eventually replace the phone, but not quite yet. I keep waiting for the Google voice attendant.

Skype is great for those overseas calls and IMs. IM+ is the winner for plain old instant messaging across multiple services (sorry Trillian).

Presently is our corporate twitter – a wonderful way to share with a whole group.

Music Group

pandora, iPod, shazam, vudu, Netflix, pocket flicks

Notice how music group is really music and movies? Pandora is my choice for streaming music. Less time invested in managing all that music and just listen to something. I suppose that says something about my appreciation of music.

Their new search capability so you don’t have to plug in a song, you can search for a theme and play other people’s playlist makes it a true meta-service.

IPod for my collection, which is a mess (see above), Shazam for tagging the song on the radio in the car for later download and purchase.

And then the video – vudu is the best HD content streaming, pay per video.

Netflix and its search assistant pocket flicks have wonderful, growth content, but fewer HD which frankly annoys me. If you have that beautiful flat screen with 1080p, then you should also have a service that provides that gorgeous picture. That’s why I have vudu. But Netflix is nice. Especially if you are viewing from your ipad.

Money Group

Starbucks Mobile Card, paypal, eBay, chase, square, mint, red laser, Etrade, loancalc, and stocks.

It’s funny that this group is not #1 on the list. It’s about money! Turns out that reading and writing are activities that happen more often than spending money. So its down here.

I am sure the day will come where my wallet will be much thinner than it is and all my plastic cards will sit on my phone. Starbucks Mobile Card is the wave of the future. I love the ability to pay for Starbucks with my phone. And perhaps this app will become a major revenue producer for Starbucks when I can link credit cards to it.

Paypal and eBay on my phone are great convenience when required, chase, my bank is also an occasional life saver. Square, the credit card processor is what I use for taking donations for my nonprofit and mint keeps me within my budgets.

RedLaser is wonderful for comparison shopping in the store. Etrade, loancalc and stocks allow me to keep up with the market and even make some advanced real estate calculations.

Photo Group

camera, photos, ipacasso, and cam card

Camera and photos are obvious, ipicasso is a great way to get google’s picassa on the iPhone. If you struggle with managing photos, then this is your solution. First get Eyefi or a wifi camera that automatically uploads your photos to Google photo sharing service picassa. What you’ve just done is turn all your cameras into posting machines. And you are posting all the photos to a source that is easy to retrieve whenever and wherever. Of course, you’ll need internet.

camCard allows me to take a picture of a business card and it scans it properly (most times) into my contacts – awesomeness!

And with integration into Google Contacts, with this one click it will end up in all the places I need it. My phone contact list and my google contacts so it is available from my web browser as well.

Second Screen

App Store, ConvertUnits, RunKeeper, Flixster, QRCode, BeerCloud, Take me to my Car, PadMapper

App Store – keeps me current on my updates
ConvertUnits - ever needs to convert from lbs to kilos? Or ML to OZ?
RunKeeper - great running companion and I have proof that I actually did run…
Flixster - great for catching the latest movie times, reviews and short clips. I barely use this. But it looks cool.
BeerCloud - best beer to pair with what
Take me to my Car – click to set a GPS coordinate so you never ask, where did I park my car again?
PadMapper - uses craiglist apartment listing to show you rental prices in the location you are at. Great when you want to know how expensive would it be to live here, no matter if you are in Hong Kong, Jerusalem or Soho (all recent usages)

Game Group

Have a look yourself, this is a business professional review

Jewish Group

Siddur, Kosher, Tanach

Never without your prayer book, bible, sundown times or the list of kosher restaurants nearby.

infrequent: Notes, ITunes, Compass, YouTube, Contacts, Voice Memos, and Mail
All the apps I can’t delete, but never or almost never use.

Permalink  |  Published in Business Strategy, Fun Technology  |  Kuty Shalev

Sometimes getting into a routine is hard to do. Especially for a task that might not make it high on your daily list, like taking out the garbage or backing up your files.

There are more sophisticated solutions for task management. I use Remember the Milk to manage tasks. There are more sophisticated solution for backup. Dropbox, Mozy, and others.

But if you have a task that you will routinely skip over, even if it stares you in the face, then this type of application can help. It focuses you on your ‘streak’ of getting that task done. And if you have done it 2 days in a row, there is a certain pleasure in making taking that streak up to 3. And there are studies that show that to keep a habit you need at lest 21 days of repetition, and then you’ll have a chance of keeping it. Other studies point to a longer streak of up to 66 days.

iDone is a great way to start a new habit.

Permalink  |  Published in Fun Technology  |  Kuty Shalev